


faith in broken things

by siriuslydraco



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-01-08 03:43:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21229241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siriuslydraco/pseuds/siriuslydraco
Summary: He's sorry for hurting her in ways he'll never be able to stitch up.(or the one where Kate gets injured and she and Seth have a heart to heart)





	faith in broken things

**Author's Note:**

> Hello my beautiful SethKate fandom!! This is only my second fic for this pairing so please enjoy! (I was also listening to the song My Baby by Sanders Bohkle and this idea just popped into my head)

The blood is everywhere- red and thick -and the sight of it gushing from Kate's pale leg makes Seth's stomach turn and his foot press harder onto the pedal.

He's seen blood before, of course he has, but he hasn't seen _hers_ and the very thought that she's in pain right now makes bile rise in his stomach. She's brave though - he can see it in the way her eyes flash to his frantic ones every few minutes, reassuring him with a sparkly green look that she's okay.

He should be the one reassuring, but he's done a piss poor job of it so far. _You'll be okay. Just wait until we find another motel. You'll be fine_. Words keep coming out of his mouth as he drives and she winces, and he knows he's irritating her with his repetitive drivel but he can't help it. He doesn't know what to do. He says the words over and over, and in the end he doesn't know who he's speaking to. Kate or himself. 

He hadn't even been paying attention in the first place-he hadn't noticed how as they'd walked back from a dingy Mexican bar a man with snake eyes jumped from the shadows. A glint of a silver knife and the flash of fangs had met them and the next thing Seth knew was that there was a stain of ash in the street and Kate's leg was gashed.

He'd bolted then, back to the car and he's been driving since. He's glad they hadn't left anything of importance back at the other motel-he made a habit of keeping their bags in whatever hijacked vehicle they were operating. 

"I'm sorry, Kate" he mumbles deeply when she groans and holds the cloth he'd given her tighter to her leg.

She just gives him that sweet smile-the one that infuriates him because she should be angry now. But oh no, Kate Fuller was just the epitome of _good_, and even when she sits with a six inch wide gash in her thigh that's bleeding sporadically over the sticky leather of the car she still manages to be just that.

Seth would like her to curse him, or scream or even dramatically slap him across the face for good measure but he knows she would never do that.

"Not your fault" she grits out in that soft Texan accent and he nearly swerves the car into the opposite lane when her hand touches his thigh. It's an innocent, friendly touch that is meant to dissipate all doubt within himself but it only creates more thoughts in his head he should feel shameful for. Her hand is gone just as quickly as it had been put there and it shakily comes to rest on her own leg, now using her two trembling hands to hold the cloth against her wound.

_Not your fault_, she had said, but Seth knows it's his fault.

He should have looked out for her more, kept an eye on their surroundings but instead he'd been caught up in the way she looked in that red sundress (the same colour of her running blood) and how her shoulders looked more brown than the rest of her skin with the way the smattering of freckles were joining together from sun exposure.

They'd been casing the joint, that's the reason they'd been there in the first place-posing as some loved up couple and Seth got so caught up in the way she laughed with the barman and touched Seth's hand or wrapped an arm around his waist that he'd hardly noticed any sign of snakes in the vicinity. 

Before he has any more time to wallow in his desperation he sees a large motel sign light up the horizon in neon green and he hears Kate sigh in relief from where she sits. He lets his dark eyes flicker towards her quickly as he stops the mustang- nearly ripping his belt off as he fumbles for the door. 

"Two minutes, Kate. I'll get us a room and I'll take care of everything" 

He's gone as soon as he says the words and Kate watches from the window as he momentarily stops outside the dingy reception door, most likely composing himself or plastering on a fake smile so that the motel staff don't become suspicious.

She can see him through the horizontal blinds-his scattered form hunched over a little as he counts out money- he looks behind him every few seconds as the receptionist (if you could even call her that) fishes around for a key.

He's been edgy and somewhat distant ever since he'd thrown her into the car and frantically stepped on it. He's called her _Kate_ too many times tonight for her liking- it's her name sure, but with Seth it was always princess, or darling when he was feeling sarcastic and he reserved Kate for when he was exasperated or tired. She just knows he's blaming himself. 

The door of the mustang is opened and before she even knows what's happening she's in a strong pair of arms, a beating heart pounding against her side. He's surprisingly gentle- a thought that sends her heart into overdrive despite the fact her right thigh is bleeding all over him - and Kate almost faults her weakness with an eye roll but she knows that it's in vain.

Seth Gecko owned her heart, and any of it's sporadic functions were entirely his fault. 

The room smells musty and damp with a hint of something citrus that Kate knows was probably the result of a few sprays of air freshener from whatever cleaning staff this place has. She lets out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding in as Seth sits her on top of a round table that is perched in front of the bed.

_One bed_.

Kate gulps down the rising panic in her throat at the thought of sharing a bed with Seth for the night and she momentarily forgets her injury as she eyes the large double that stares back at her like a warning.

She'd walked into a bar this evening, arm linked with a wanted criminal as they'd cased the joint for an upcoming poker tournament they were going to hijack and had nearly been sucked dry by a culebra-but the mere thought of having Seth Gecko lying underneath the same sheets as her made her frightened beyond belief.

Perhaps he wouldn't even share it with her and would take the chair-that seemed most likely.

"Kate?" she hears Seth's voice and from the worried tone that wavers in it and the way his hands come to cup her face-forcing her eyes to meet his-she knows it's not the first time he's called her in the last minute.

Emerald green meet hazel as she stares at his worried face and she blinks slowly, trying to hide the panic that is ebbing all over her. 

"Sorry?" she mumbles to him, obtusely aware of the fact his rough hands are holding her face between them. She hopes he can't feel how hot she's growing, but then again he'd probably think it was from the adrenaline coursing through her body as she loses blood. 

"I said I'm going to have to stitch it" Seth says as he drops his hands from her, instead using them to throw off his jacket.

She watches as he fumbles with the long sleeves of his shirt, trying in vain to roll them up and in the end his shaky fingers unbuttons the black cotton and that too is left on the ground-leaving him in a white tank. Kate is just relieved he hadn't been naked underneath his shirt.

If she wasn't going to pass out from blood loss she really didn't want Seth's bare and toned torso to be the reason for fainting. 

Seth is normally so cool and collected-head cocked and gun steady like something out of those classic Bond movies Scott used to watch-but now he's shaking slightly as he rummages in their things for any materials resembling first aid.

He pulls out bandages and a packet of suture thread that Kate had insisted they would need. _Don't worry about me, princess,_ he had said to her- back then he hadn't banked on her being the one getting hurt but in the end he'd pocketed the packet of surgical thread and needles and now he's entirely grateful. 

"Bite on this" he doesn't meet her eyes as he removes his belt and hands it to her to wedge between her teeth.

She takes it with unsteady hands and her heart pounds with fear due to the anticipation of even more pain. She doesn't fancy having Seth stick a needle in her since he's no doctor, but he's all she's got right now and the belt is bitten on without complaint. He leaves her momentarily to return to the car and when he comes back he has another bag in his hands that Kate had untidily packed the day before.

A large, half drank bottle of whisky is pulled from the sack and Kate grimaces when he sets it down beside her. Her dried blood is washed from his hands at the small kitchenette sink and then he sits before her in the rickety steel chair. 

His hands feel rough but are placed gently on her bare legs as he hikes up her sundress to reveal her gash. It's deep enough, almost an inch into her skin and about six in length, and the perimeter is now crusted with thick globs of dried scarlet.

But it's still bleeding despite the fact she'd been attacked almost an hour ago, and the image of the culebra lunging at them with a blade comes back to his mind. If he hadn't pushed Kate roughly out of the way and to the ground then that knife would have scarred her face or taken an eye out. He pushes the image out of his head and grabs the whisky bottle. 

"Motherfucker!" Kate's swear is muffled by Seth's belt but she screams again when he splashes more whisky over her thigh.

The sting is unimaginable and she closes her eyes tightly as she feels her wound begin to throb with the improvised disinfectant spreading through her bloodstream. Seth looks at her when she slowly reopens her eyes, his own eyes wide and fearful, and she knows he's asking her silently if she's okay.

She just nods her head to him, blinking away the tears that are threatening to spill down her face, and then the next twenty minutes are spent in agony under the mercy of a tiny needle. 

She'd once busted her knee pretty bad after a fall from her bike and had to get a few tiny stitches in it. She'd been seven and had cried big tears as the nurse stitched her up and reassured her she was so very brave. She'd been given a numbing agent but she'd still been terrified despite the fact she hadn't felt any pain- but her Daddy had held her tiny hand between two of his and had kissed it gently every now and then, telling her she was a good girl. He took her for ice cream afterwards and she had proudly showed off her stitches to all the kids in school the next day. 

She remembers the warmth of her Daddy's hands between hers, the soothing way he'd rubbed his thumb against the back of her palm and how he'd told her she was the best bike rider in all of Bethel and that everyone had accidents after she'd cried to him that she was never riding her stupid pink bicycle ever again! She'd been so innocent then, thinking that a deep graze on her knee was the worst thing in the world.

Kate wonders if her Daddy would hold her hand now if he saw her or if he'd be ashamed of the fact that a grown man is holed away with her in a motel. The same man who had once pointed a gun at her Daddy's head. 

She doesn't realise she's crying until she feels Seth's hands on her face and her eyes fly open. The world is blurry and watery for a second, until she blinks and she can feel them then-those big tears that now run fluidly from her eyes.

He's all brooding darkness and flickering panic as he sits before her, those tight biceps jolting under tanned skin as he holds her face and wipes the tears away. 

"It's over now, princess. I'm finished" he reassures her softly as he removes the belt from between her teeth.

He does not know that the pain of a resurrected childhood memory and not the torture of being stitched is the reason for her tears. She looks down then at her thigh and eyes Seth's handiwork.

The stitching isn't half bad, but Kate knows he's probably had practice on either himself or Richie and she doesn't want to ask him how he learned to stitch an excision row. She knows all too well the bitter taste of the past and she doesn't want Seth to feel like he has to explain to her any memories involving his brother. 

"Thank you" Kate smiles weakly at him as he begins bandaging her tightly.

She ignores the fact that he lifts her leg over his shoulder to wrap the clean cotton completely around her thigh and pushes the thought down that she had dreamt about something like this before-except she hadn't been injured in that particular imaginative scenario, and he actually had both of her legs wrapped around his shoulders. 

"Thank you?" he questions her as he sets her leg back on the table gently.

She's momentarily confused at his response and their eyes lock for a moment before he speaks again-there's a hundred different emotions swimming in the hazel of his eyes but she can't decipher any of them. 

"That's normally the polite thing to say when someone does something kind for you" Kate shifts on the table, wincing a little at the movement as she pulls the red dress a little bit over her thighs. She practically just had Seth Gecko's head between her legs mere seconds ago but she still feels the need for unbridled modesty. 

"I'm not a kind man, Kate" Seth mumbles with a shake of his head, his fingers playing with the gold ankle bracelet that jingles softly around her foot.

She'd sighed when she'd spotted it in the window of a coastal town they'd stayed in for a mere three days, admiring the shells and starfish symbols that clung to the chain. He hadn't stolen it boldly like he did with almost everything else they possessed. He'd bought it for her and he can still remember how much she smiled when he'd handed it to her-he can still remember the perfume she wore when she'd leaned in to kiss his cheek.

"Seth-" 

"Your leg was nearly hacked off by a blood sucking snake because I wasn't paying attention! You're in pain because of me and you say thank you? You should be saying something like, fuck you Seth you're a real piece of shit and I hate you. Maybe kick me in the nuts or something just so I'm really sure" he's back to being his biting sarcastic self and when she peers at his hands she finds that they're steady.

All panic and doom seems to have dissipated from his body and is now replaced by an unwavering self loathing that Kate is all too familiar with. She's shared motels and spent hours in cars with his self hating persona. 

"If you really were a piece of shit you wouldn't have tried to save me, and you certainly wouldn't have stitched me up" Kate tries to reason with him but he leans back against the chair and clenches his jaw tightly, and folds his arms across his chest "you know a real piece of shit would have left me there to die, but you didn't. And I could never hate you" 

"Kate, you were hurt because I wasn't quick enough and I didn't bother to case our surroundings good enough. I should have been more careful" his head is hung low and his voice is quiet like he's talking to himself and not to her. She watches as he runs his hands over his handsome face, the sound of his rough palms scratching against his beard bridging the silence between them. 

"Well then I wasn't quick enough or careful enough either. If you're going to blame yourself then you might as well blame me, because we're in this together. Partners, right?" Kate eyes him carefully as he lifts his head to look at her with eyes that seem to want to bore into her and decipher every single thought in her head. She doesn't look away from him but just sits patiently until he speaks. 

"You know you can leave me anytime, right? You don't have to stay. You could go back to Jesus town or wherever and just get the fuck away from me and _this_-" he motions around him to the motel room and then to her bandaged leg as if to point out all the bad things in her life "you don't have to get hurt, Kate" 

Of course she knew she could leave, she wasn't his hostage anymore, and she could easily hotwire a car and high tail it away from him and culebra's and Mexico and towards a life she'd left behind.

She'd known that as soon as she'd stepped out of the Twister with a body flecked with blood and sweat, and a shattered heart inside her chest. She'd drive the RV home and she'd be safe, but then she hadn't been so sure if Bethel would be safe again.

Safety had come to her in a three piece with flames up his arm and that safety had wielded a gun and shielded her beneath an ancient temple. Seth Gecko was safety, even if he thought he was danger. Kate had made the decision to leave with him, and even now she can't regret it. 

"I know that, but I choose to stay" Kate tells him softly, her voice nearly getting lost in the whir of the fan above their heads but she knows that Seth heard her. 

"Why? I'm not exactly easy to deal with" 

She knows the unsaid words that are weaving themselves in his spoken ones. The apology that is stuck in his throat-the one where he says he's sorry for holding a gun to her family and forcing them to drive over the border into a country that was the setting for their downfall. He's sorry for hurting her in ways he'll never be able to stitch up. 

"Do you want me to leave?" she finds herself asking him and she swears she can almost hear his heart stop beating for a millisecond beneath his chiselled chest.

His dark eyes partner with hers and she knows his answer before he even speaks. _No_. 

"Selfishly, no" Seth tells her softly-he's surprised her tonight with his gentle ways but she finds out that he's not done being gentle as he places his hands on her legs.

God she shouldn't want him to touch her-she's only barely considered a woman and he's a grown man with a dangerous history but her body sags on the table at the feel of his fingers on her skin.

They've touched before, but only briefly like the fleeting touch of his hand on her back or the soft squeeze of her knee in reassurance. But this is different and Kate wonders whether the dramatic events of the evening has blurred the boundary lines temporarily.

"If I was a good man I'd drop you off at the border and never look back. Fuck, if I was a good man....Kate I would have never taken you with me in the first place. But I can't seem to let you go and tonight I just thought of how much worse it could have been and how much better you'd be without me" Seth confesses with a heavy sigh and before he can even rationally think of his actions, he's putting his head in her lap. He can feel her stiffen under him but all apprehension is gone from her body in an instant. He sighs against her as her hand goes to his hair. 

Kate is now completely sure that her Daddy would be unsatisfied with her actions, but somehow she can't process wallowing too long since the man who owns her heart just told her that he doesn't want to let her go. Perhaps she's a stand in sibling for Richie, but then again she knows the way Seth holds her is not familial. Perhaps it's just human contact he craves more than anything and she's the only person who is in his life.

Kate doesn't even consider the utter truth of the matter-that Seth is undoubtedly and wholeheartedly in love with her. 

"I don't want to leave either" she tells him gently as she combs her fingers through his hair and he sighs deeply-his shoulders sagging greatly and then he lifts his head, and Kate knows that whatever their moment had been is now gone as he straightens up in his chair and leans away from her. 

"You're a walking cliché, Fuller. You know that?" Seth's mouth is pulled playfully into a smirk-but deep in the hazel of his eyes there is something burning away. Something sad. 

"What do you mean?" she asks him with a tilt of her head.

A tremendous shiver rolls through her body as his fingers come to trace the gold cross that hangs around her neck. Suddenly she understands and she fights the urge to sigh exasperatedly. Apparently it wasn't just her brother who believed she was a walking Freudian text case. 

"The preacher's daughter who is just the picture of good, and who sees the humanity in everyone. Even the soulless" he scoffs the last part as he pulls away from her and she shifts a little from where she sits on the table.

Her white pumps that are splattered with red blood are on either side of his thighs as they rest on the chair, and something carnal inside her craves being even closer to him. Cliché my ass, she thinks. 

"I am not a cliché, Gecko" she stubbornly tells him, almost feeling as if her cross is burning into her flesh with her obscene thoughts "how many preachers daughters do you know? Are you some sort of expert on the subject?"

"You'd be surprised, Princess. Probably helped some of them get religion better than Christ himself" he tells her in that rough voice of his and she can feel the goose bumps rise on her arms.

She'd fallen to her knees in church before in search of religion. Would she be so willing to fall and worship Seth Gecko? _Yes,_ the voice in her head whispers, _you would_. 

She shakes her head then as she gulps and tries to get a hold of the conversation again. Seth is trying to veer away from the topic of discussion by being playful and inappropriate. A ruse to make her uncomfortable but it's only causing her heart to beat more erratically in her chest. Her green eyes focus on his now-sparkly and captivating and he doesn't look away from her. 

"I doubt there's a preachers daughter who has done the things I've done" she almost whispers-thinking of how she used a chainsaw to hack into those women-_no culebras_-back at the Twister. Or how she killed her Daddy. Or how willingly she got into a car with Seth. 

"That's nothing compared to what I've done. You did what you had to do to survive, Katie. I robbed and cheated and killed because I'm a piece of shit idiot who never learned any better. Everyone knows I'm no good. But _you_ look at me like how you're looking at me now and...." he waves a hand towards her but trails off, his voice faltering and his eyes leaving hers. 

"How do I look at you?" she whispers again because she doesn't really trust her voice right now.

"Like I matter somehow" 

He's broken-she can tell that much by just looking at him and she knows it's the sort of broken that has stemmed from years of childhood trauma and hurled abuse, and not just because of the Twister.

Up until now he's only ever mattered to Richie and an uncle he hasn't seen for a long time. Neither of them are here now. But Kate is, and in some twisted turn of events it dawns on her just how much she cares. She wants to reach out to him and hold him. She wants to hold him so hard she fits all his broken pieces back together. 

"You do matter, Seth. We all matter. Each and every one of us" she tells him softly "I was told that since I was very young. That everyone matters and is deserving of love and forgiveness" 

"So you think that the big bad man upstairs has love for me, huh?" Seth asks her and she knows he wants to scoff at her beliefs but he holds it down within himself. She just eyes him from where she sits-trying to ignore the stinging in her leg that is returning underneath the cotton bandage. 

"My Mama used to tell me that when you do bad things, and you realise they're bad then it means you have a conscience. And you can use that conscience to repent. But when you do bad things and you don't ask for forgiveness then that's when you're lost" her voice is so soft it ripples towards Seth like a wavering whisper and she watches him as he sits there in silence "I believe that you have a conscience, Seth. It's that conscience that made you protect me tonight. You _do_ have a soul. You're not lost" 

"Didn't your Mama ever tell you to not have faith in broken things, princess?" his question is not sarcastic or biting and her nickname is offered to her so sincerely it almost knocks the breath from her. She shakes her head lightly at him, her cherry lips curved into a blinding smile. 

"It's the broken things that need faith the most" 

Her words stick with him long after she is tucked away under the covers of the motel sheets-the memory of her soft voice replaying in his head. She had looked at him differently the rest of the evening, like she was searching for the soul she promised him he owned within the depths of his tired body.

He sits in the chair at the table, the rest of the bottle of whisky he had used to disinfect Kate's leg is now sitting in a glass that he brings to his mouth every few seconds. His dark eyes rest on her small frame beneath the sheets and he is struck-yet again-by how deeply he feels for this girl.

He shouldn't want to go to the depths of hell for her but he knows he'd protect her from here all the way to the ends of the earth. That's why he can't sleep with the fear that a fellow culebra of the one who'd attacked them is stalking from outside in the dark. _Even assholes have friends. _

Perhaps it's redemption he seeks in the eyes of her God, a god that has thrown judgement on so many and by doing this one good deed-protecting her-then he can become one of the lucky ones that gets a free pass to paradise.

Or perhaps it's something deeper than that. Something that was forged from a battle in an ancient temple and from sharing motel rooms. Perhaps it's something _much_ deeper. Something Seth doesn't even want to admit to. 

_You're not lost_, she had said, and as he looks at Kate now something in his heart twitches. He's not lost when he's with her. 

She turns in the bed with a sleepy sigh and something gold catches in the neon light coming in through the motel curtain. Her cross glints around her neck and casts a flickering shadow across Seth as he sits idly in the chair. 

_You do have a soul_, she had said. And somehow, he believes her. 


End file.
